Dust of Snow
by The Carnivorous Muffin
Summary: Wizard Lenin and Lily briefly address the future in which Wizard Lenin returns to the material plane leaving Lily behind. The future, it seems, is more uncertain than either of them expected. Side fic to Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus


**Author's Note: For those of you about to read this I offer fair warning that this is a side fic to the AU "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus" and while some side fics focus on more familiar canon characters this one is pretty solidly placed in that particular universe. As far as I can tell this one would be fairly nonsensical without some familiarity with the original fic. However, whether you look at the original fic or not is really up to you, I just write things.**

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><p>She rarely dreamt before meeting Wizard Lenin, instead in those moments her mind would simply drift as if settling into silt at the bottom of a river where thoughts still raged overhead, sleeping in those days had been something to escape the tedium of the dark cupboard and the silence. In those days oblivion, if only for a few hours, was somewhat gratifying if it meant less time staring at walls and trying to think of something that would make it all go by a little faster.<p>

After the implementation of Skinner's House and receiving her new bedroom this had been less of an issue as being bored in Dudley's second bedroom was much easier than being bored in a cramped, dark, cupboard that she'd been in for as long as she could remember. So sleeping no longer was a form of escapism, there were things to do in the world and she gratefully took advantage of that, instead sleeping offered the opportunity of talking to Wizard Lenin face to face.

It was all well and good with his thoughts in her head and hers in his but it wasn't the same as seeing him in person, or rather imagining him in person. So even when she could be working nights at Riddle Incorporated, researching methods of returning Wizard Lenin to his body, or anything else that might come up she didn't and instead she slept for at least a few hours.

So most nights, whether they were at Hogwarts, Surrey, London or anywhere else, consisted of her dreaming and visiting the worlds in her head. Rarely were they the same, sometimes containing similar elements, but more often drifting with either her or Wizard Lenin's mood.

For the most part it suited him, she only saw that surface dreaming layer, the image it presented to them but he claimed it went much deeper.

"This," He said motioning to the North Pole after one of their first holidays together, featuring the buildings from Die Hard, elves, Santa, and other holiday themed things, "Is the layer that a truly proficient legilimens might reach in your mind, a little past surface thoughts and memories and perceptions, however the true mind is far deeper."

It was something like a labyrinth, he said, but one that was not so simple to solve as continually turning left. It was not only thoughts and memories but also something intangible and ineffable that he couldn't bring himself to describe, and the further in you went, the harder it became to find your way out. Lily could only descend so far, as it was her brain after all, but Wizard Lenin being his own free spirit had traveled much deeper.

After that she had looked through the ice beneath their feet, having become clear for their benefit, and she peered down into it wondering would could be held in the black abyss.

"Anything interesting down there?"

He paused, regarding her carefully with his own cold blue eyes, and then had said, "More than anyone can possibly imagine."

He did not clarify that statement and looking at him then, at the distance in his expression and the way his eyes lingered both on her and the ice beneath them, she guessed that even he was not entirely certain of his answer.

Regardless her mind was not the same as a cupboard, but even so, as time marched on they both felt the walls closing in on him as if he were well and truly trapped. It was his great unspoken fear, a dark shadow in both of their minds, that he would never find a way back out and into the greater plane known as reality.

Usually it was a topic they both avoided, even as she worked towards getting him a body, whether through zombies, robots, philosopher's stones, or androids they did not discuss the day he left or did not leave. She treated it as a puzzle, something to whittle away at time when it seemed too immense to take in, a greater goal to accomplish that wasn't solved simply but not something that was truly relevant. Most of her life was that way after all, a series of ultimately meaningless tasks that she performed because it seemed as if she had to or at the very least was expected to, so why not pretend the things that were important and that did matter meant nothing at all.

Sometimes though there was no avoiding it.

Early into her Hogwarts career, after classes had settled themselves and things seemed to be progressing in the way they were doomed to progress, Lily and Wizard Lenin sat in her head and discussed that day when they finally found it.

She thought that her mind reflected more her mood than his that night, because it wasn't quite bleak but it wasn't filled with sunshine either, rather it seemed stretched a little so that the landscape that they were in was too thin to be real. Hogwarts seemed similar, to her at the very least; almost real but stretched far too thin to be convincing.

It was just her and Wizard Lenin, as it usually was, sitting in the midst of grass staring at mountains in the distance as if scenery truly was interesting enough to hold their attention for very long.

"That corridor on the third floor," He started, his face flat but his blue eyes burning so brightly, "There's something there, something worth looking for given Dumbledore's explanation and heavy handed warning."

Lily glanced over at him, at the determination that seemed to well within him, and it was admirable how undaunted he was even after all this time. He had never truly given up, there had been moments where it had seemed as if he had already lost, where the despair was almost overwhelming, but he had never given up completely. Always there was a spark of hope and resolve in his eyes that refused to let him sink into the depths of her mind never to return again. To him, the future in which he remained trapped within her forever simply did not exist, there would always be some way out and for that alone she believed that he was right.

Revolutions, Hidenburgists, such things could hardly exist without him. Elba was not forever and it seemed almost destiny that he would return.

"We'll check it out Sunday," Lily said thinking back on the speech, certain death was a hard thing to guarantee but if whatever was in the third floor was that efficient there was little point in her not taking advantage of it to visit Uncle Death. "You think it's something that could get you a body?"

"Perhaps." He fell silent, clearly thinking, plotting out the chess board in his head and wondering at what Dumbledore would play upon it with an introduction like that. There were games upon games in his head, constantly in play, and sometimes she wondered how he kept track of them all.

She rarely kept track of what people were thinking, this was because most people she knew didn't think and were not people in the way that she, Death, and Wizard Lenin were people. The idea of Dudders as a complicated game piece, with his own thoughts and motives, was fairly mind boggling. However, she supposed that if she was trapped in her cupboard the way Wizard Lenin was trapped in her head, with no way out and nothing to do then she'd make up complicated strategy games as well.

For a moment she simply watched him as he stared out into the distance, his pale fingers tapping against the ground, and his eyes burning elsewhere as if all the obstacles were lined before him just waiting to be knocked down. He seemed distant, not in the same space as her, and while he did this on occasion and she did it to him as well there was something in this distance that was not agreeable.

She didn't like feeling uncertain, she never had, sure there were times when she admitted that she didn't know but that was not the same thing as uncertain. She didn't know what Rabbit was, where he came from, or why he had even answered her call but that didn't really bother her. It sometimes gave her pause but it was definite in its uncertainty, there was another kind of uncertainty.

She didn't doubt Wizard Lenin would succeed, at least for most part she didn't doubt. Sometimes there were stray and idle thoughts but for majority of time they thought and held firm and waited knowing that one day he'd get out. It was afterwards, life after Wizard Lenin, that she couldn't see.

Life before Wizard Lenin was becoming fuzzy, she remembered it, but it seemed so distant and irrelevant. Like life before Death there had been nothing in it, only the feeling that there should be something and emptiness instead, life before them had been cupboards under the stairs.

When he left, when he turned his eye to revolution and the bourgeoisie, to the Hidnenburgists and the wretched oligarchy where would she be? Or, rather, where would he be in relation to her? Would his revolution only be a hop, skip, and a jump away from her, around the corner from Knockturn Alley and then down the street or would it be somewhere that Lily Riddle, Ellie Potter, or just Lily in general had no business being?

"You look far too thoughtful." A voice interrupted and she turned to see Wizard Lenin regarding her with a dubious expression. He was under the impression that whenever Lily thought about anything for too long bad things tended to happen, not that he minded the bad things as he often found them entertaining, but he was more than a little wary of them.

Rabbit, he had told her once, was a product of her thinking too much.

"Just thinking about the revolution." She said with a sigh, twirling a pale green stalk of grass in her fingers, "If Dumbledore's secret is something relevant to us, if it's a zombie horde, a robot, or even a pretty stone that makes money, then what will you do after?"

He looked somewhat perplexed by the question, as if it was no question at all, he would do what he had always done. Lead the proletariat to victory and upturn the demonic capitalist system which had corrupted the pseudo glitch manipulators, what else was there? She couldn't picture him doing anything else, always he was the communist in her head even when he pretended he somehow wasn't, and she felt that said quite a bit.

Eventually though he considered her question and answered it in his usual careful manner.

"Most of my followers are either in prison, in another country, or dead so (how do you usually put this again…) getting the band back together might not be feasible or even worth my time. Besides given the reputation of the Death Eaters as well as the fact that it has been a decade since my... defeat… I most likely have lost all political leverage that I had. To be truly successful I may have to start fresh, and that is never simple, however this is all getting rather ahead of myself as so far no viable opportunity has presented itself. Let's see what's in this third floor corridor first before we jump to conclusions."

One of the benefits of being in a dream world was that thoughts and desires shaped themselves into reality rather rapidly, so when Lily thought that Wizard Lenin could really use some propaganda for the new Hindenburgist movement it presented itself in the blink of an eye. She held one up for him.

He eyed it with raised eyebrows, taking in the black, the red, the determined looking Wizard Lenin printed so that he stared off into the horizon, and finally the words reading off, "Communism Makes Pseudo Glitch Manipulation Actually Useful… It would be quite good if only anyone knew what it meant."

She set down the posters next to her, so that black and red men with stars on their hats looked up at the too pale sky with critical eyes, and then she said, "I suppose I'll be in Hogwarts during all this."

He must have realized what she was truly getting at, that Hogwarts was as inconsequential as it always was, that her being at Hogwarts meant nothing and that it was what Hogwarts represented that was important. It wasn't really the distance, the physical distance was easy enough to handle, it was the thought of that voice in her head simply gone.

As if it was never there in the first place.

She saw Death fairly regularly, on a weekly basis, but that was only once a week and with Wizard Lenin elsewhere what else was Hogwarts or anywhere else but a larger and slightly more interesting cupboard?

He frowned down at her, as if he had not considered Lily in his tangled web, and after a bit said, "It's only seven years, and if what your uncle Death claims is true then you'll be here quite a bit longer than that… I suppose if it bothers you that much then no one is forcing you to get an education."

That hadn't really addressed the issue and they both knew it. She supposed she could tag along, join Wizard Lenin's revolutionary movement, create his propaganda and perhaps even subdue his enemies, but at the same time she couldn't see herself there either and even then it wasn't quite the same. Wizard Lenin would be busy with the revolution, with the peons, and she'd be there but it wouldn't really be the same.

She supposed she could find other things to do, Hogwarts did have some interesting aspects to it, Dumbledore was turning out to be fairly interesting even if he made Wizard Lenin completely irrational, and she did like Neville. She'd live, make the best of things like she always tried to do, and that would be enough.

She supposed.

"I will have an address, you know, letters are things that exist." He cut in, not with a smile, but with an uncertain look as if he wasn't quite sure what he was saying either. It was not like him, to make this kind of an offer, as if Lily was more than a place he was simply residing for the moment.

Such offers were not to be taken lightly, so for a moment she only stared, and then she smiled.

"Of course, I will expect to hear all the details of the glorious revolution."

"And I will expect to hear an explanation of why after only a few short days of my absence Hogwarts has been burned to the ground." He responded drily, his lips quirking slightly into that slight smile that was all his own.

"Days?" Lily objected standing, "Hogwarts has been doing perfectly well… Well I mean Rabbit ate all the ghosts but who cares about them and maybe that Potions thing got a bit extreme but… well… There was Snape and..." She trailed off trying to think of an explanation Wizard Lenin would deem as reasonable but nothing was coming to mind, he was very picky on that type of thing and everything she considered a perfectly good explanation he rarely accepted.

He ignored her instead smiling as he stood and picked up her posters, flipping through them one by one before tucking them under his arm, "One wonders why I bother to incite revolution when I can simply unleash you upon their children. It really is so much more efficient."

"Besides, even if it does burn down I can always just make a new one." Lily replied before he could add anything else. He just stared at her for a moment, blinking, before saying, "Dear God, you probably could, I don't think I can even picture it."

"Well, Default will be given its rightful place as the greatest house."

"Naturally."

"And everyone will take Rabbit seriously."

"How could they do otherwise?"

"And the list of arbitrary rules you're supposed to follow will be posted at the front of every classroom so you know what the hell is going on!"

This one seemed to stump Wizard Lenin, he gave her an odd look for a moment, before saying in a rather chiding tone, "Do try to restrain yourself, Lily."

It was almost morning, she could feel the light hitting her face from the window, somewhere back where she was sleeping. In a few moments she would wake up to another day at Hogwarts which would have its ups, downs, and just bizarre moments. The house points would most assuredly decrease, her popularity would fluxuate, and with Wizard Lenin commentating it might resemble something that made sense. It was the usual pattern of things.

They both looked upwards towards the sky for a moment, where Lily would exit in only a few moments, and in parting Wizard Lenin said, "For now it's all irrelevant; we shall have to see what that third floor corridor holds."

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><p><strong>Author's Note: And things got serious for a little bit. This will come up again in the main fic but here we get to focus on feelings for a little bit without ridiculous adventures interrupting. Anyway this is written for the 700th review of "Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus" by who asked for a fic about, "Lily and Voldemort, and what their thoughts on what will happen ifwhen he gets his own body since she will lose the permanent friend she's had since little and her traducer to the outside world and he will no longer be privy to all of thoughts and adventures or be the most important person in her life."**

**Thanks to readers, you guys are great, and reviews as always are greatly appreciated. **


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